Tuesday, October 1, 2002    The Christian Science Monitor

                                         The Home Forum

Before these edibles were at

Delicious history your grocery store, they were                                                                                    in Asia, Holland, Peru........

I MAGINE A YEAR OF LUNCHES

 without a single potato chip, apple slice, or carrot stick.

         N o French fries, no ketchup, no tacos. And forget about corn flakes for breakfast, too.

T hat’s the kind of menu you’d be facing if enterprising humans had not discovered, tasted, developed, improved, and then transplanted fruits and vegetables growing in one region of the world to the rest of the whole world.

Would you have been brave enough to even try eating a tomato, when at the time it was thought to be poisonous? Could you have even seen the snack potential in an Andean tuber? The crunchy possibilities of a meadow weed called Queen Anne’s lace? Well, someone did! As a result your meals are that much more richer and much more enjoyable because of them. We’ve harvested some interesting facts in the following stories of ordinary food and presented them here. Have you heard the truth about Johnny Appleseed and the secret of “baby” carrots? Well, read on.

A-MAIZE-ING GRAIN

By now you surely know that corn was originally a native American food and is called “maize” outside the United States. (“Mahiz” was the original Taino Indian word. Elsewhere in the world, “corn” refers to any kind of grain.) Scientists have recently found corn kernels that are 8,600 years old in caves in Mexico, where they believe the crop was first cultivated. Originally each individual kernel was covered with a husk, much like oats or barley. But, as corn moved through Mexico it cross-bred with some other native grasses, lost the individual husks, and then became the modern ancestor of the corn we know and love so much today. By the time Columbus reached America (the New World), fields of corn were being cultivated in North and South America. Corn was already a staple of the native American diet, along with squash and beans. Together, these three crops were called “the three sisters,” and they were commonly grown in the same fields. The beans climbed the corn stalks, and the squash vines crowded out the weeds. Today, corn is the 2^nd most plentiful grain in the whole world. Rice enjoys the 1^st place with wheat a strong 3^rd . There are 5 major kings of corn: sweet corn, popcorn, flint corn, flour corn, and dent corn. Dent corn is the most widely grown. It’s used for making hominy and corn flour. When European explorers brought corn to Europe, they saw it as something for pigs not people. And that was true as corn is still used for animal feed, but, it’s also in breakfast cereals, flour, cornmeal, starches, sweeteners (look for “high fructose corn syrup” in sodas and candy), and cooking oil. By the way, corn is even used as auto fuel (that’s what ethanol is.) Sweet corn (as in “corn-on-the-cob”) was first found growing in anIroquois village along the Susquehanna River in 1779. It didn’t catch on as a food until 1840s. But since the 1870s, scientists have developed many sweet varieties.

A COLORFUL WORLD TRAVELER

Originally found in Asia Minor and around Afghanistan, the carrot has traveled around the world and changed colors many times over the last 2,000 years. Black carrots, purple carrots, yellow, red, and even white carrots were enjoyed by the Greeks and Romans. The orange carrot, which you recognize so well, didn’t even come into being until the 1500s. That’s when some patriotic Dutch growers bred carrots to grow the same color as the House of Orange, the Dutch royal family name. The color stuck, and we now associate the carrot with the color orange.

Our carrot is a close relative of the wildflower Queen Anne’s Lace (also known as wild carrot). You often see this pretty, gray-green plant with its round, lacy white flowers growing in meadows throughout the United States. Pull up one sometime and note that the white rot look and smells like a carrot. Carrots were grown by the Virginia colonists at Jamestown in 1609, and then in Massachusetts in 1629. Thomas Jefferson grew several kinds of carrots in his own garden at Monticello.

You were likely to find carrots in his garden of all sizes and colors.

However, the modern carrot came into being in the 1800s thanks to the efforts of French horticulturist Vilmorin-Andrieux. Working with the wildflower Queen Anne’s Lace, he produced fairly good garden types of carrot with fleshy rots that were biennial. (In other words, the plant lived for two seasons. Most vegetables are annuals, living only one growing season) For four years, Mr. Vilmorin selected only the largest and best-formed carrots. Finally he had a plant with a thick fleshy root, some were white, others yellow and red. These varieties were then crossed with orange carrots from Holland.

And for “baby carrots? They’re not “babies” at all. They are a full-sized variety that grow quickly. The long carrots are then peeled, cut into thirds, and then tumbled and polished to give them a shape that is what we think young carrots must look like. The U.S. Department of Agriculture developed the “baby” carrot and introduced them in 1988

TAMING WILD APPLESThe wild ancestors of our modern apple still live in the remote Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan, near Afghanistan. These wild apple trees can grow to be 50 feet high and live for hundreds of years. Their fruit is recognized as an apple, but it is the size of a ping-pong ball, it’s hard, and it’s mostly seed, with little flesh. Starting back as far as 3,000 years ago, apple trees were taken from Asia and planted in the Mediterranean region of Europe. The Greeks and the Romans were growing several varieties of apple by 00 BC. Apples soon found their way across the Roman Empire, and every region came to have its own favorite varieties.

European settlers brought apple seeds and trees with them all the time to the New World. Records from the Massachusetts Bay Company indicate that apples were being grown in New England as early as 1630. Unlike most fruits, apples ripen late in the fall and can retain their favor and quality for three to five months if kept in a cool, dry location. They provided good food for sailors and immigrants on the long journey to the Americas. The trees were very adaptable to many different environments, and, so today they are grown through out the world. Apple varieties are spread by grafting – splicing the branch of one apple tree onto another, or onto “root stock.” The spliced branch is held in place with tape or coated with wax until it starts to grow. If you plant the seeds of an apple, you’re most likely to get a tree that bears small, sour apples like its wild forebears

YES! There really was a “Johnny Appleseed.” He was a colorful character named John Chapman who reportedly wore a cooking pot for a hat. In the 1700s, he traveled what was then the far Western Frontier of the United States (Ohio). He planted apple trees just ahead of the settlers and gave away apple seeds. He never wore shoes and he didn’t care much about his belongings, so he often looked very ragged. But he made sure that he brought apples to the Midwest, not willy-nilly style, but carefully planted in orchards. Chapman’s sour apples were then used to make apple cider – the favorite drink of all good frontiersmen.

YOU SAY ‘TOMATO,’ BUT THEY SAID ‘POISON’

Did you know, or have you heard, that tomatoes were considered poisonous in England and early America? (There actually exists a statue of the first man to eat one.) They were sometimes called “love apples” by American colonists after the old French name for tomato, pomme d’amour.

Tomatoes were first grown in South America on the slopes of the Andes Mountains about 2,000 years ago. They traveled north as the Indians pushed their way into Central America and then Mexico. Spanish explorers brought the vegetable back to Spain in the 1500s and from there they quickly spread to Italy (parts of which were then governed by Spain). Tomatoes were immediately embraced by Italian cooks and became a mainstay of their cuisine. ((where would spaghetti - the noodles for which came from China, incidentally - be without tomato sauce ?) Tomatoes had to make their way through Western Europe before they voyaged back across the Atlantic to North America and a cool reception ,to say the least. The English grew tomatoes in their gardens because they thought the plants looked pretty. But, they refused to eat the fruit because the plant is related to the nightshade family, which has several poisonous species.

Again, Thomas Jefferson – who loved gardening – played an important role. In 1781, he became one of the first white man in America to grow tomatoes. Later, a French refugee introduced tomatoes to Philadelphia in 1789, and an Italian painter brought them to Salem, Mass. In 1802. But, it was the Creole people of New Orleans who first used tomatoes extensively in their gumbos and jambalayas as early as 1812. By the mid 1800s tomatoes were in gardens throughout the United States. (In an odd footnote to history, tomatoes were declared to be a fruit by the United States Supreme Court in 1887.) To botanists, the tomato is decidedly a fruit. The court case had to do with tariffs (taxes) that were levied on fruit imported from the West Indies. The high court, in its infinite wisdom, decided that although tomatoes were “fruit of the vine,” they could be eaten raw or cooked like other common vegetables (potatoes. Carrots, celery, cabbage, etc.) Also, they were eaten as dessert, as other fruits were. The court ruled that they were vegetables, and should not be taxed.

FROM THE INCAS TO THE IRISH

Like tomatoes, potatoes have their roots in South America. Potatoes, to, were first cultivated high in the Andes. They were the starchy staple of the Incas Indians. The potatoes the Incas ate were small and bitter, and sometimes had blue or purple flesh. They didn’t look anything like the large white-fleshed potatoes we’re familiar with today. (You know, the ones we eat with our big steaks) Explorers brought the potato to Spain, Italy, and France before 1600. But, from the 1700s through the mid-1800s, the potato was most closely associated with Ireland. Because the potato was so easy to cultivate ands would grow well in poor soil, it became the mainstay of the Irish diet from 1688 to 1845. (157 years that is). Then a series of diseases affected Irish potato crops, which led to periods of famine. The worst, most severe famine was from 1845 to 1847. Many Irish died, and many emigrated to America.

Rachel Dickinson

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